“Because of the reasons for what he believed. The reasons, you see, were generous, deeply human reasons, even if the conclusions as far as we can see, were unworthy. Who are we, unwilling or unable to commit ourselves, to judge?”

“Must one be ‘committed’ as you call it? Why can’t people go about their business in peace?” she asked passionately. Every time she came close to people’s feeling about Edward, Isabel felt as if she were being sucked down into a whirlpool where nothing was clear, where everything was struggle and agony.

“There is a price to be paid for not participating and for refusing to be responsible. I wonder,” Goldberg said, and she felt the slight barb in the question, “what price you have paid.”

“For staying safely outside?”

“For staying safely outside.”

Isabel thought this over for a moment. “That’s what you meant then when you said something about what you might expect of yourself, because of Edward—since——”

“Yes,” Goldberg said, stamping out his cigarette with his feet. The sun which had warmed them had gone behind a cloud and Isabel felt the chill from the stone steps in her bones. It was time to go. She did not quite understand why Goldberg thanked her so warmly when they parted at the door of the hotel, but perhaps it was that he would not have talked like this to anyone in the college. Perhaps it was that he too was lonely. She smiled as she lay on her bed and remembered that she had imagined these people as safe, as superior, as part of some whole from which she was shut out, whereas she saw now they were terribly divided and exposed, exposed to each other, as naked in some ways as children. Oh, if she could only talk to Edward now. She moved her head back and forth on the pillow as if to keep the tears back by this physical motion.

VIII

VIII